


Next Time 'Round

by Elleth



Category: City of Hunger (Video Game), Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:51:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9788705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: They keep meeting.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the SSSS Femslash February Music Box, for Vienna Teng's [In Another Life](http://womenofssss.tumblr.com/post/157278969247/ssss-has-a-strong-thread-to-the-past-to-bonds-of).

_Threads tangle, sometimes. Chance, or fate, or free will, or divine fingers that are only just re-awakening after eons, fumbling through lifetimes and twisting strands in life's fabric that have never yet met._

_The reason doesn't matter in the end._

*

Kaino hasn't _really_ expected for their vacation trip to be an escape from the end of the world. Bird flu, Swine flu, it all blew over. The Rash Illness also would, she'd thought. Sure, she'd been scared, but she hadn't expected it to be a game-changer. More of a game-changer in the other direction, to rub under Eino and Tuuli's noses after it was over, to tell them they couldn't take to the lakes every time anyone coughed in their direction. 

But the crazy people are right and Saku's started seeing - _things_ \- the rest of them can't, except for baby Ensi, so the freak incident with the radio before the lights go out for good doesn't even faze her very much any longer. 

Only the woman's voice does. It's not anything special - interference when they try to make contact with their parents, with Helmi, with anyone in Mikkeli (by then Saku is hunched up on the sofa with his hands clapped over his ears and trying to rock a screaming Ensi on his knees) and find only static. 

Then, yelling voices in a language that takes Kaino a moment to sort. Not Finnish. Not Russian. Not Swedish. Norwegian? 

"-run Larsen, give that _back_!" 

"We finally got through to someone - Hei? Hallo? HalLO!? Say something!" 

"Hello!" Kaino hasn't heard any voices other than her family's in over a week. It's a desperate breath of fresh air, however unlikely that they should pick up Norwegians of all people. 

"Saimaa reporting, who's there?" She stumbles out an answer in Swedish, glad she'd picked that up on a whim - the whim being that she'd really considered moving to Sweden for a job that'd never happened, after her breakup with Helmi and the newly-acquired joblessness and restaurant-less-ness that came as a consequence). 

"No, give that -!" The voice dims with distance, then static crackles and the radio whoops through the frequencies. " - damnit, Aksel, there's -" more static - "still alive ou- "

Static. Static. Static. 

Static like the snow that's falling outside. 

"Come back. Saimaa reporting. Kaino Hotakainen. Come _back_!" Kaino slams her hand down on the dashboard, leans back in her seat, heart seizing with a feeling of familiarity she never manages to explain. 

She stays on the radio all night. 

Static, then and every day after. But she remembers the voice forever. 

* 

_Sometimes they do not even meet. Sometimes they live miles and years apart. While one is born, the other walks a red desert on the other side of the world, flung far out and missing something she fails to realize before she is pulled homeward._

* 

"That was such a dumb thing to say, of course she's tall! Everyone's taller than me!" Tuuri frowns unhappily when Lalli simply rolls his shoulders and goes back to inspecting their tank's interior, leaving Tuuri alone with her complaints. 

And still. 

Sigrun - Sigrun floored her. It's been like - Tuuri doesn't have words for it. Like she met someone she'd known forever. And from the look on Sigrun's face, there'd been _something_ there, too.  
But that's not something Tuuri can ask, can she? _I like you already_ \- that's got to be enough.

So that is what it stays at: Helping Tuuri on and off the tank with more touching than necessary. Nicknames, and laughter, and saluting. Hair-ruffles. 

A few weeks that make what follows worth it. 

The troll, and Sigrun's anger. 

The winter turns icier the worse Tuuri becomes, freezing the world solid before a bank of clouds rolls in and buries the landscape in snow. Sigrun brings handfuls of it into the tank cool Tuuri's fever and soothe the painful scabs breaking her skin, through her last bright night. 

Before the Rash steals her away, she squeezes Sigrun's hand, clarity settling suddenly on her. Maybe that is what magic is like, this vision of a great, icy planet with a single mountain and tiny oases of green. 

*

 _Humanity survives and strengthens, begins to thrive again. They find the cure. The Silent World grows less, and eventually all patches on the map are cleansed, filled, settled. Through it, sometimes they sleep. Sometimes all they have are letters, or later, words typed into a screen. Sometimes they meet, eyes over a crowd, sometimes pass each other by entirely wondering what stirred them that moment. Their names change and repeat - Sigrun, Solveig, Sváfa, Tuuri, Vieno, Kaino. Sometimes there are continents between them and they spend their lifetimes searching. Sometimes their hands touch, but they wear someone else's ring, or they face one another at a conference table as warring nations trying to pave the way for peace._

_Years and years on, and humanity takes to the stars._

* 

The sparkly-haired guy is yammering about old peoples' homes to Lalli again. 

She barely resists rolling her eyes; behind her Onni heaves a wet-sounding sigh. He hasn't been happy leaving home to come to the station - he can't see the excitement, but at least he's finally agreed to this. They're strapped for cash, and she is the best damn computer whiz anywhere around the volcano, she knows that much. No use wasting away in a backwater. 

And besides, something told her - something that wasn't one of her predictive AIs, call it a hunch instead - that she'd regret not going. 

And then she catches a glimpse - simultaneously, they catch it simultaneously, by now it's been often enough, lifetimes and lifetimes again that they'd know each other anywhere, anyhow. 

She ignores Onni shouting about registration as she starts running straight into a pair of open arms. 

*

_In the end they weave a pattern to those who care to look._

**Author's Note:**

> In case you're wondering about Sváfa: Sigrún, in Norse mythology, was one of the Valkyries, a rebirth of the former Valkyrie... [Sváfa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sv%C3%A1fa). It seemed fitting to have three names for each of them.
> 
> First City of Hunger fanfic? :D Of course it's all speculation I'm expecting to get thoroughly Minna'd, and the whole thing is AU, but I do like the headcanon that COH not so much an alternate 'verse and rather more of a case similar to Avatar (The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, not blue cat aliens Avatar) where connections persist through a certain group of people regardless of lifetime. The femslash only is the cherry on top. :)


End file.
